The College Scorecard is the federal dataset behind every row on this site. It exists so the essential numbers about a school are public and checkable by anyone.
Key Takeaways
- The Scorecard is public federal data: net price, completion, earnings, debt, tuition, and enrollment.
- Every figure is school-wide for undergraduates who received federal aid, published by the Department of Education.
- Because the figures are public, no school can pay us to change a row.
- The data describes the whole school, so check the program and format separately.
- It is the backbone of every ranking and tool on this site, and any figure can be checked at collegescorecard.ed.gov.
What the Scorecard is
The College Scorecard is the Department of Education's public dataset on colleges that participate in federal student aid. For each school it publishes net price, completion rate, median earnings ten years after enrollment, median debt among completers, tuition, enrollment, and more, all updated on the federal site and all downloadable.
One row at a time is the whole philosophy. The dataset does not rank schools and does not produce a single 'best' badge. It publishes the raw numbers a person needs to compare schools fairly, and then it waits. The site you are reading now exists to do the ranking part visibly, one figure per list, with the Scorecard's numbers underneath.
Which numbers it publishes
The rows this site uses come straight from the dataset. Average net price is cost of attendance minus grants for students who received federal aid. Completion rate is the share of first-time, full-time students who finish within 150% of the expected time. Median earnings are measured ten years after enrollment, and median debt is what completers who borrowed owe at the midpoint of borrowers.
Those four rows answer the practical questions: what it costs, whether students finish, what it returns, and what it leaves behind. The site adds tuition schedules for in-state and out-of-state rates, availability flags for online programs, and enrollment size, and every row carries its source.
What the Scorecard does not tell you
The figures describe the whole school. A university's online program and its campus program share the same school-wide numbers, because the federal data is not sliced by format. The data also covers undergraduates who received federal aid, not every student and not graduate students, so a master's list built on the dataset reads carefully.
There is no program-level quality score in the dataset and no ranking. If a school claims the Scorecard 'ranks' its program, it is describing something else. The dataset publishes numbers, and the partnerships and transfer rules, the things a program alone knows, come from the school's own documents.
Why build a site on it
Because a ranking is only honest when the numbers cannot be bought. Public federal data cannot be edited by an advertiser, cannot be moved by a sponsorship, and cannot be gamed with a submitted metric. The College Scorecard also changes nothing to please a school, which is the property an independent choice should be built on.
That is the promise behind every ranking here: the order runs on one published figure, the filters are stated in the methodology, and a school that pays appears in a separate, labeled section where its payment does not move anyone's rows. You can check any figure at collegescorecard.ed.gov, and the reason we can keep saying that is the site is designed around it.
Examples from the dataset in action
The rows show up everywhere on this site once you know what they are. Penn's 97% completion rate is the Scorecard's graduation figure, and its $111,371 median earnings are the dataset's ten-year number. University of Florida's $6,541 net price is its published cost after grants, and a school that does not release the number drops out of a price sort rather than receiving a made-up figure.
On the affordable list, the 40% completion bar is a policy boundary set on top of the data. The median net price across 211 online colleges, $14,580, and the median earnings of $53,406 are both Scorecard figures summarized for the list. Every ranking page links the exact figure that moved the order, so the answer to 'why is this here' is always a published number.
Frequently asked questions
Who updates the Scorecard? The Department of Education publishes updates from its federal data collection, and the release schedule and coverage are public.
Can a school see or change its Scorecard numbers? The underlying data is reported through federal processes, and the published row does not change on request, which is the property a fair ranking relies on.
Is the Scorecard the same as accreditation? No. Accreditation is a review process; the Scorecard is a dataset. Both matter, and both are public.
How current are the figures? The dataset is a snapshot of the latest federal collection, and this site labels the release it uses in the methodology on every page.
Where to check the numbers yourself
Every figure on this site can be verified at collegescorecard.ed.gov. Search the school, open the breakdown, and the net price, completion, earnings, and debt rows match what the rankings show, because they are read from the same source. For program-specific facts, such as clinical placement or online fees, the school's own catalog and aid office are the place to go.
All guides|Source figures: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, unless a section says otherwise.